Click the “Issues” link on Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jim Marchant’s campaign website and the very first thing that pops up is “MAKE GAS CHEAP AGAIN!”
Marchant promises to “stabilize fuel prices” by “encouraging exploration and production of our abundant natural resources.”
Some of you may recall in 2022 when Marchant was hunting down the planetary “cabal” that manipulated voting machines, er, running for Nevada secretary of state, he similarly promised that if you voted for him the price of gas would come down. Because that’s something that a Nevada secretary of state controls, evidently.
Weirdly, Marchant lost anyway.
Another candidate in the Senate Republican primary, Tony Grady, is somewhat less full-throated about gas prices on his website, merely indicating a desire for the U.S. to “regain energy independence.”
But don’t let a dash of minimalism fool you. Grady came in second in the 2022 Republican primary for Nevada lieutenant governor, which is a meaningless job with no inbox. Anybody who immediately follows that up by running for a U.S. Senate seat clearly has spunk.
Another competitor in the Republican Senate primary, Jeff Gunter, declares that he will “Unleash American Energy,” which, according to Gunter, is an urgent priority because Joe Biden “has declared war on the industries fueling America.”
Sam Brown, yet another Republican in the Senate primary, is also anti-leash. “It’s time to restore America First energy policies that unleash the full potential of American energy independence and strength,” Brown declares.
The “America First” bit is a nice touch, since it’s impossible for a Republican in this day and age to kiss up to Trump too often – especially if, like Brown, you’re desperate for Trump’s endorsement.
The assertion that Biden has somehow “leashed” U.S. energy production is not confined to Nevada Republicans. The party’s presidential candidates have been saying the same thing. That of course includes the party’s leader, to whom all of them will be pleading allegiance within a matter of weeks if not days.
Taking a break last fall from his busy schedule of running for president and against law, order and democracy during courtroom campaign events, Donald Trump issued an energy plan vowing to – what else? – “unleash American energy,” by pursuing a policy of “DRILL, BABY, DRILL.”
Each and every day, Sarah Palin must regret she didn’t try to copyright that phrase. It just goes to show that grifting, done properly, can be work too. But I digress.
Trump has made it clear that once back in office, his top priorities will be inflicting retribution on his enemies, detaining immigrants in concentration camps, and being a dictator.
But he’s always been a multi-tasking over-achiever. (Even the most dastardly criminals typically face a single indictment, with at most a handful of charges. Trump, ever eager to prove his importance, has collected four indictments over multiple venues with 91 charges.)
So along with jailing and/or crushing his enemies (a.k.a. vermin) and incarcerating people of whom his base disapproves (a.k.a. blood poisoners) in the tradition of history’s dictatorial thugs large and small, Trump also plans to “restore American energy independence.”
Leashed? They wish.
It’s not clear what Trump, let alone mimicking Nevada Republican office shoppers, exactly mean by the term “energy independence.”
One more or less common interpretation of the phrase is producing more energy in the U.S. than the U.S. consumes.
Trump can honestly (a novelty) say that happened on his watch. U.S. energy production – including the sort of energy for which the oil industry “drill baby drills,” has been greater than energy consumption since 2019. (That was in part a culmination of increased oil and gas production during the Obama administration).
However, Trump’s assertion, echoed either directly or by inference by Republicans in Nevada and nationwide, that the U.S. must “restore” or “regain” energy independence presumes it was lost after Trump exited the White House in disgrace..
It wasn’t.
Due to the pandemic, oil and gas production – but also consumption – dropped dramatically during Trump’s last year in office 2020. When the economy started to emerge from the pandemic (thanks, Biden), domestic oil production’s recovery was sluggish.
Republicans argued wrongly then, as now, that Biden policies were strangling the oil industry. Actual oil market experts, whom Republicans are in the habit of aggressively ignoring, then as now attributed the anemic recovery to other factors, including this one: shareholders who prefer that oil companies spend their profits on dividends and stock buybacks instead of investing in drill baby drilling and building more refineries.
But then, and now, if measured by domestic production exceeding domestic consumption, the U.S. has become even more “energy independent” under Biden.
Last year was a record year for oil and gas production in the U.S., and domestic production is projected to be larger still this year.
The U.S. has also been exporting more energy than it imports since 2019. Last year U.S. oil & gas exports were the highest on record – and they too are projected to be even higher this year.
In its most recent annual energy outlook, published last year, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projected that even under varying scenarios and conditions, the U.S. is expected to remain a net exporter of petroleum products, including natural gas, through 2050.
Republicans are fond of saying they support an “all of the above” energy policy. More than some clean energy and climate advocates would like, that appears to be exactly what the Biden administration is doing.
In 2019, the price of gallon of gas in Nevada was $2.82. This week, it’s $3.80. There are a lot of reasons for that, just as there are a lot of reasons for the dramatic spikes in gas prices in 2022 and parts of 2023, reasons that include oil company profiteering and oil company shareholder profit-mongering.
Ever since the oil crisis of the 1970s politicians have campaigned on doing something about the price of gas. Decades later, neither party has yet figured out a way to control the world’s largest and most globally integrated commodity market.
The existence of some workable isolationist “America first” solution seems naive. But even if there is one, it isn’t “unleashing” the industry. The oil and gas industry is and always has been a lot of things. “Leashed” has never, ever been one of them.
